Daniel Arcese, a member of the Long Beach Police department's harbor dive team. The team was formed approximately ten years ago and now has 12 divers that train at least twice a month and work with many other agency dive teams. Long Beach. June 27, 2014. (Brittany Murray / Staff Photographer)

The Seabotix ROV allows Long Beach Police department's harbor dive team to remotely inspect something underwater while controlling it from the surface with real time feedback to the operator. This as well as most of the tools used by the team have been acquired through grants. Long Beach. June 27, 2014. (Brittany Murray / Staff Photographer)

LONG BEACH >> From the surface, only air lines indicated that two divers had plunged feet-first into the murky waters of the Port of Long Beach.

But Long Beach police Sgt. Steve Smock could see them from his perch aboard a police boat with the help of a computer tablet that can track the whereabouts and vital signs of up to six divers as they search for anything from murder weapons to bodies.

The tablet also monitors the environment around the divers, including water temperature and how deep they are, data that Smock can print out for future reference.

“So if the radio’s not working or we can’t communicate underwater or if we’re unsure where he is, I can look right here on the map to show me where he is,” he said. “It’s a very good safety feature for running the dive site.”

Technology has changed the way the region’s public safety dive teams do their jobs. From the toxin-shielding suits that keep them safe to the equipment that could save lives, the federal and Los Angeles County public safety agencies that make up the Port Dive Operations Group help the U.S. Coast Guard protect the waterfront and adjacent waterways, keeping operations flowing at the twin ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the nation’s busiest.

That group, called PDOG, brings together the FBI, Long Beach police and fire, Los Angeles Port Police, Los Angeles police, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and other agencies to train and hone their skills to handle disasters too big for one agency.

“We train quarterly so we can come together as one entity,” said Gonzalo Medina, who is in charge of Long Beach fire’s 15-member dive team. “We know at some point there’s going to be a national disaster, man-made or natural. The idea is that we all work together and support each other.”

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Agencies belonging to PDOG employ not only the tablet, but also such devices as sonar, remote-controlled vehicles that crawl along a ship’s underbelly and “rebreathers” that prevent air bubbles from rising to the surface and giving away a diver’s location.

Divers have taken on more duties since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which put more focus on protecting ports from terrorism and inspired the formation of PDOG.

“The ports are a target,” Long Beach police Lt. Eric Ledesma said. “Nothing has happened, but we try to stay proactive.”

And the divers in PDOG do that by learning the best ways to search for explosives on a ship, remove victims from a watery crash and how to use state-of-the-art equipment.

Smock recently gave a tour of an old warehouse that serves as the Long Beach police dive team’s training area.

In addition to practicing every other week with grant-funded equipment like the rebreathers and dive sleds that can be preprogrammed to take them to their destination, the 12 divers use a nearby water tank to get a feel for working in an enclosed area. Eight car doors lean against a wall, ready to be test subjects for a knife that can break into windows, Smock said. He pointed out another tool: thick yellow rubber lift bags that bring vehicles, aircraft and boat wreckage up from the depths.

The divers wear puncture-resistant dive suits to prevent contaminants from seeping in while, say, searching for a murder weapon in the Los Angeles River.

“No one really wants to do it,” said Greg Jensen, a Long Beach police dive team member for seven years who also patrols the port’s terminals by boat in search of terrorist activities. “You can’t see a single thing in the water. It’s like being in a closet that’s completely sealed and your searching is all by touch.”

For public safety divers, being comfortable in the water is not easy as they cope with limited visibility, tight spaces and magnified sound coming from ships.

“It can be a little intimidating when you realize how big the ship is and realize that there are parts of a ship that can injure you,” Jensen said. “The methodical process of making the ship safe is very important.”

For the Los Angeles Port Police Department, sonar has accelerated how long it takes divers to recover things. In 2012, the body of “Top Gun” director Tony Scott, who committed suicide by jumping off the Vincent Thomas Bridge, was found within 20 minutes. Otherwise the search would have taken hours, Sgt. Ralph Edwards said.

“The sonar equipment is a big game-changer,” said Edwards, who supervises the Los Angeles Port Police Department dive team, which consists of five full-time divers and 16 others throughout the department who can suit up on an as-needed basis to respond to big emergencies at the port. “Technology has helped us out.”

The Long Beach Fire Department/Lifeguards’ dive team — which trains the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s, Long Beach police and many of the area’s public safety divers — has evolved since its formation in the 1960s.

The fire dive team has adjusted its training so that divers are able to accomplish a search and rescue as quickly as 15 minutes.

“Many times, we had to call divers from home, but now because we’re so focused on this first hour, we know we have to have divers on call 24/7 if we want to be able to make that recovery,” said Long Beach Marine Safety Chief Randy Foster.

Red Bull uses the Long Beach Fire Department divers for its massive crowd-drawing stunts, including the popular Flugtag, which consists of teams attempting to soar on wacky, homemade flying contraptions, only to take a dive into the water below.

The team’s work with Red Bull inspired the building of training equipment that simulates an upside-down vehicle trapped underwater.

“A lot of the technology we’re using came from the experience they got diving with Red Bull and making rapid recoveries,” Foster said. “We’re always looking for ways to get safer, faster and being able to pull someone out of the water that first hour. That’s our focus.”

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